Springfield daily republic. [volume] (Springfield, O. [Ohio]) 1887-1888, 1887-01-14
BLuNDEEtNG 81 WIRE.
ERRORS WHICH BRING ANNOYANCE,
AMUSEMENT OR LOSS,

operators-How Long Circuits aud
Weak Current. Play the Mischief
BIunders Of had Writing.
MANY quaint stories are relatsd Of the
REGULAR mistakes made by printers III set
ting type. The intelligent compositor'
has become all expression Of satirical re
prosch in newspaper offices, and blunders
are naturally shouldered upon him, no mat
ter by whom made II is not alone in the
composing room that ridiculous errors occur
The telegraph Office is one of the most fruit
full fields for what are termed bulls in
telegraphers' nomenclature, that Is, errors
made in transmitting messages, whereby
they are rendered meaningless, or. as some
times occurs. serious subjects are trans
formed into jokes
There are very good reasons, no doubt,
for some Of tho mistakes recorded against
telegraph operators. There are no excuses
no good reasons, for others. Some are the
result Of sheer stupidity, ignorant operators
Leing set to do work requiring not alone
skill in manipulating a key. but intelligence
behind all No doubt poor penmanship IL
responsible for the errors of the telegraph
as it is for the blunders of the composing
room. The operator who reads ''hearse'
for horse may have had his copy written by
the same editor who dashed off a criticism
on ''Girotie Girofs and who was dumb
founded to find that the conpositor had
made IL 'Sniffie Snoffie - Yet it does not
aiways follow that this il the case, for
telegram has been known to he transmitted
YES when the copy made it NO, with
copper plate or poster type distinctness.
WEAK ELECTRICAL CIRCUITS.
Long and weak circuits telectricaD are
also indirectly responsible for mistakes,
even though competent and careful cper-
ators NAV preside at both ends of the line
Letters composed entirely Of dots are often
metamorphosed, IN being received as an
i. for instance, the second dot Of which the
e is composed becoming attached TO the fol
lowing letter aud completely changing the
orthography: or an may turn out an e
and combined, the dots becoming separated
through faulty working of the electric cur
rent thus falling out, - as the telegrapher
explains or else running together. Either
cause will alter letters, and unless the receiv-
ing operator is exceptionally careful and
quick to guess the meaning Of ''bulled"
words he may perpetrate errors which will
cost him salary as well as reputation.
As has been mentioned above, long cir
cults and weak electrical currents frequently
piay the mischief with dots and dashes.
They fall out, =" as the operators say, van
ish or commingle, until, oftentimes, two
or more letters arc blended OF, as with short
letters, fail entirely to 60 through. This
might account for Transforming BASEBALL
into '.baz bam gag" where s and and II
are liable 10 be misunderstood for 2 and M
Another. with which many expert oper-
ators are familiar, is the old time Cog hog
Jags is not iOO," when It was intended that
the recipient should understand he was to
Come home. James is not well" Here
the receiving operator pobsbly has com
mitted the old error of reading iby soundl &
for me. the signs for which are quite SINH
lar, while we'll - if not carefully read (by
sound. is liable to be transformed into
100" OF course, no careful operator
would permit such perversion OF words TO
leave his hands; still such messages have
been sent out, no doubt to the great bewil
derment of those for whom they we're in
tended.
when the swamows hogward hy' was
what q careless plug operator made Of
the familiar quotation which came TO him
one night in q specid telegram to a New
phlrl. II ut IC6u AAo kNepSh hN&s
day, he was no doubt surprised to discover
that it had been turned by the careful tele-
graph editor into when the Swallows
same telegrapher who made John Howard
Payne's beautiful lines read, Hog, swot
Hog, there's no place like hog"
II would appear to be impossible 10 turn
message reading simply NO into YES, "
- 81, l.. IL h,,,,
rare They are the result. no doubt, Of alb
sent mindedness, the sending operator, per
haps, being engaged in an interesting CON
versation with some associate in his otfice,
as not infrequently happens, as he ticks of
the letters which entirely change the mean
ing Of some very important business mes
sage Another example Of carelessness was
in a message sent from San Francisco TO a
lady in New York by her husband, who in
endeavoring TO advise her lsconically and
cheaply as to what she should de about
joining him, wrote in the blank, do moth
ing aboIt furniture. This was turned
into DO nothing without furniture" and
the result was the recipient, satisfied she
was TO take furniture with her, invested
$1,000 in household goods, TO discover later
on that they were not wanted. As conse-
quence a suit was brought against the com
panv.
BLUNDERs OF BAD WRITING.
Blind writing is rssponibls for many of
the blunders made in sending messages, as,
for instance Mother is very well, " when
in reality mother WAS very i'll. "
Mother died to-day went through from q
southern Office and was received at New
York Weather bad to-day" There may
be some excuse for confounding weather
and mother from similarity of the Morse
sounds mo and wes but no explanation Of
this kind would account for misreading
bad for died. y
Send check this afternoon" has been
made 10 read Send chase this afternoon. >
"Your bacon" has become Your banker
and Salmon received has been metanor-
phoset into Balloon received Send no
more" was wired BY a commission mer-
chant to party from whom he was receiv-
ing large quantities OF produce for sale, and
it put the recipient tn much Inconvenience
and eventually subjected him to considerable
loss, for the message as he received it read,
Send on more, " and he exerted himself
accordingly to meet the demand.
When The Mikado' was produced for
the first time in New York a critic for
warded an account Of the performance TO
his paper in the west. The report was TO
be dropped tO a newspaper in Detroit
In giving the cast the character Of Ko-ko
occurred, and the New York operator licked
off the letters, first inserting quotation
points and ending with the same. 1t hap
pens that the telegraphic code sign for a
colon is 0, and the Detroit operator, who
had probably never heard of The Miksdo"
and WAS ignorant OF the existence OF such
parsonage as the Lord High Executioner,
very carefully jotted down -: :" and fol-
lowed it with the actors name. 1t passed.
the editors, printers and proofreaders, and
was published aS the telegraph operator had
interpretei the word.
The most ancient bull. probably, is
the, to operators, familiar '& O." which is
frequently msds TO do service for ESQ. "
particularly in press messages. Then came
the well known and oft mentioned ''OS